274 Kansas Academy of Science. 



banks, carrying away outhouses, fences, cattle, pigs, and chickens; 

 the river began falling on the 14th and rising again on the 20th. 



At Fort Leavenworth the rainfall for June, 1844, was 8.53 inches; 

 July, 12 inches; August, 8.08 inches — aggregating 28.61 inches for 

 the three months (normal annual precipitation for that place is 

 30.89 inches). Mr. Richard W. Cummins, of the Fort Leaven- 

 worth agency, reported to the government: "All those farming on 

 the bottom-lands of the Kansas river, and other bottom-lands, lost 

 their crops entirely; not only their crops, but nearly all their stock, 

 hogs, cattle, and even horses. . . . The 'Konzas' farm mostly 

 on the bottom-lands of the Kansas river, which was overflowed 

 from bluff to bluff." S. M. Irvin, Indian agent in charge of the 

 Great Nemaha subagency, reported : "The past season, you must 

 be aware, has been a most unpropitious one for farming operations. 

 The unprecedented fall of rain which took place in June and July, 

 by which much of the best farming lands of the Indians was sev- 

 eral times inundated, has been a serious drawback upon the aggre- 

 gate value of the farming products." 



W. W. Cone, in his Shawnee County History, speaking of the 

 flood of 1844, says: "During the flood Major Cummings, pay- 

 master of the United States army, wishing to cross from the south 

 to the north side of the Kaw river, at Topeka, stepped into a canoe 

 at about the present site of the corner of Topeka avenue and Second 

 street, and was rowed by an Indian from there to the bluffs, near 

 the present residence of J. M. Harding, in Soldier township, the 

 water then being twenty feet deep over the ground where North 

 Topeka now stands." 



Mr. P. E. Chappell, of Kansas City, Mo., an old river steamboat 

 man, states that the flood of 1844 in the Missouri river was con- 

 fined to the lower river, and says : "The entire bottom from the 

 Kaw to the mouth of the Missouri was completely submerged, and 

 from bluff to bluff presented appearance of an inland sea." He 

 further states that in 1845 and in 1851 there was unusually high 

 water in the river, and all the second bottoms and low sloughs were 

 submerged, and we find that at Fort Leavenworth 15.80 inches of 

 rain fell during June, 1845, while in 1851 the Fort Leavenworth 

 record shows, for May, 6.40 inches; for June, 8.16; July, 6.78, and 

 August 5.02 — a total of 26.36 inches. 



THE DROUGHT. 



Mr. E. C. Manning, in his paper "In at the Birth, and — " says 

 in part: "During the winter of 1859-60 the sun shone forty-five 

 consecutive days through a cloudless sky upon a snowless plain. 



